Covid Journal, Day 88: Cherries! Folklore and a Story

65 this morning, lovely and cool after a stormy night. The gardens are happy to have the rain, and so am I. No lugging buckets of water far and wide today.

I mentioned yesterday that the cherries are getting ripe. We'll pick a few of the ripest ones today, hopefully enough for a pie or a couple turnovers. But the song I posted on yesterday's blog got me thinking about cherries in folklore. Are there any superstitions about this ruby fruit? 

Turns out there are several. 

This one, from the blog The Book of Everyone, is so quirkily written that it made me smile. "If a cherry tree bloomed in Autumn this was terrible juju for you, your friends, or your family members. If you saw the juicy red fruits making an appearance late in the year, this meant that unfortunately someone was going to pop their clogs. And if that wasn’t enough, it also meant the tree was going to wilt and die too." Pop their clogs? That's a new one on me! 

If you eat a double cherry when you're pregnant, you'll have twins. Seems unlikely since if you were already pregnant how could the cherry possibly affect the outcome? But the source of this superstition said it happened to her aunt, so who am I to argue. 

But double cherries can bring good luck. If two people share a double cherry and each makes a wish, both wishes will come true.

Carrying a piece of wild cherry twig or elder twig in your pocket will protect you from poison ivy.

For an older person, the cherry tree can predict how many years of life they have left. The person should run around the tree of ripe cherries, then shake the tree. The number of cherries that fall will be the number of years remaining to them.

A cherry tree with both blooms and ripe fruit means that a child will die.

Gathering cherries means deception by a woman, according to the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore and the Occult. I cannot quite see how that works. Does it mean the gatherer will be deceived, or the woman gathering will deceive someone? 

In Japan, if a cherry tree blooms with a lighter than usual color, winter will last longer that year.

In England, do not have your shoes rubbed with the leaves of a cherry tree or you will die of cherry stone suffocation. Whatever that is, it sounds awful. This, and the next two, are from the Encyclopedia of Superstitions by Radford:

You will know if you are to be married and when by counting the number cherry stones on your plate after a meal, saying, "This year, next year, sometime, never."

A cherry tree will bear more fruit in its lifetime if its first fruit is eaten by a woman who has just given birth. This one is from Switzerland. And another, from France: on the first day of Lent, children would run through orchards with lighted torches, singing "bear apples, bear pears, and cherries all black to Scouvion!" Then the lighted torches were thrown into the trees. Similar to apple tree wassailing in Britain, but the French carried the tradition to other fruit trees as well.

To dream of cherries means disappointment is coming your way. From Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant Kingdom  by Richard Folkard.

Wild cherry bark has long been used for medicinal purposes, steeped as a tea or added to alcohol. The tree does have toxic properties, however, so I think it best to leave its uses and harvest to professionals. The Herbal Academy has an extensive monograph free for download on the topic of the wild cherry and its uses.

One of my favorite legends is the ballad of the Cherry Tree Carol, one I often sing at the holidays. It's a story of Mary and Joseph passing through a garden before the birth of Jesus. Mary asks Joseph to pull down a branch so she can have some cherries, but Joseph, feeling angry that she is carrying someone else's child, tells her to let the father of her baby get the cherries for her. Then "out spoke Baby Jesus, from out Mary's womb, bend down you tallest trees, that my mother might have some." The trees bent as commanded, and Mary gathered cherries, "while Joseph stood around." Such human-ness in poor Joseph! This is one of the Child ballads, #54, and the only carol in that extensive collection.


I'll end this cherry-ful post with a story that I often tell at the holidays. This tale is from Cornwall, and since I've visited Cornwall and Tintagel, it takes on a bit more meaning to me. Besides, it's just fun to tell.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.